


The Name-Giver

by Haberdasher



Category: Elsewhere University (Webcomic)
Genre: Fae & Fairies, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-14
Updated: 2018-10-14
Packaged: 2019-08-01 18:14:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16289417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Haberdasher/pseuds/Haberdasher
Summary: The story of a string of deals at Elsewhere University.





	The Name-Giver

You ask for luck to be on your side more often than not.

The price for this, the woman with the face of a bird tells you, is a Name.

She doesn’t say that the Name has to be your own.

So you spit out the name of your ex-boyfriend, the man who broke your heart a year ago, who as far as you knew was pursuing an engineering degree somewhere on the other end of the country.

She senses your trick, you think, though it’s hard to be certain. But she takes the Name all the same, and the deal is made.

You ace your multiple-choice midterm the next day, and your appetite for deals is whetted.

The woman with the face of a bird has many things to offer, but all she ever demands from you is a Name. And so you give away the names of various acquaintances one by one.

Never family--even if you wanted to risk them coming to harm, and you don’t, the odds of their name being traced back to yours would be too great. And never close friends, the ones who you stayed in touch with as you all went your separate ways, who cheer you on even though they don’t know the half of what you’re going through.

But people you barely know, people living far from Elsewhere with no reason to come any closer, people whose names you struggle to remember as you’re conjuring them up--they’re fair game, you figure. A Name without a person to go with it can’t do much of anything, after all.

After your fourth deal, the woman with the face of a bird stops calling you by your safename and starts to call you Name-Giver instead. You’re not sure how to feel about that, but you roll with it just the same. It’s not something you’re proud of, exactly, but it does fit.

You never bargain for anything too big, anything that would raise eyebrows outside Elsewhere’s grounds, but little by little you enrich yourself, and the only price you pay is a series of Names taken from far-away places and far-away times. It was too good to be true, perhaps, but you didn’t second-guess it, knowing that you would be far from the first to come out ahead after a series of deals with the Fair Folk.

But then the day comes when your old friend from middle school, Caitlin, contacts you on Facebook and asks if she can meet up with you at Elsewhere, since she’ll be nearby anyway.

You call her up, and start to explain the Rules to her--and halfway through telling her that everyone has to go by a nickname on campus, you remember that “Caitlin Rose” was one of the Names you offered up to the woman with the face of a bird.

(You don’t even remember what you got for that particular Name, as the deals have started to blur together in your mind. Whiter teeth, maybe? You could have used tooth whitener for that, you belatedly realize. You could have used tooth whitener, and instead you struck a deal with a Fae.)

You try to dissuade Caitlin from visiting you, but she insists that it has to happen, since she’ll be in the neighborhood anyhow and you’ll be so close by. (You’re not entirely sure what “neighborhood” she’s even referring to, as Elsewhere is surrounded primarily by vast fields on all sides.)

You wait to greet her as she arrives on campus, as she leaves her car and sets foot on Elsewhere’s grounds for the first time.

And you see the woman with the face of a bird watching her from afar.

Caitlin Rose never leaves Elsewhere, and you know exactly why.


End file.
